Escape Learning

As a part of the Beyond the Books Educational Foundation grant we received, a group of teachers participated in Escape Box Challenge professional development in January. I couldn't wait to try this with my students and this quarter I added an Escape Box Challenge as one of our centers. Students used the title list and tablet to determine the call numbers. They then compared the call numbers to the code worksheet to decide

what the critical numbers are for the 4 digit lock. I wanted to make sure that our first challenge was fairly straight forward to allow for success. This was a HUGE hit with the 3rd through 5th grade. I can't wait to find another challenge for next semester. The students are requesting that there be an Escape each quarter and I agree.

I picked up the February 2013 issue of Library Sparks and was instantly drawn to the article by Aileen Kirkham titled My Budget Was Cut: Between a Rock & a Hard Place. We were recently informed that our district had a 2.4 million dollar deficit that would be balanced with two years of reductions. I can’t help but wonder what that means for my already small-ish budget.Kirkham suggests:

Be thoughtful with your weeding. Instead of weeding and replacing an entire section (ie. 500s), select the 5 to 10 worst offenders in that section. This makes good sense because we can’t sacrifice ‘best practice’ during difficult financial time. If we choose instead to weed frugally we can maintain an ever growing and changing collection making sure that it meets the needs of today’s patrons.

Reach out to community business with the goal of improving the library’s collection. I have often thought that it would be wise to approach our local baseball team’s manager asking for support in updating our baseball selections (from the late 90s). Now might be the time to address specific areas of our collection based on local businesses that have shown an interest in supporting our school in the past. It would be a great way to improve our collection and bring the community into our collection.

Ask vendors for special group pricing. Many of our district’s 6 elementary libraries have subscriptions to the same databases. By purchasing the subscriptions together we might be able to get a ‘volume discount.’ The author noted that both Capstone Digital’s Pebble Go and TeachingBooks.net offer group discounts.

Kirkham’s article also highlighted numerous grants and/or programs to supplement your budget. The three I found most worth looking into were:www.titlewish.com- set up donations on behalf of the school library.www.mackin.com- Funds4Books program allows donated funds to be used for library collections.www.dollargeneral.com – This company has a Literacy Foundation for funds to support youth who struggle with literacy.I love these ideas and think that it sounds like a great project. Who knows, I might even let my fingers do the walking in the yellow pages to find businesses that might support a mini-library collection.

Kristi Sutter

In 2009 I was given the chance to move into the best job in the world- Library Media Specialist! I work with students and teachers, coaching both in technology and sharing my passion for literature.